JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Anatomy has been the cornerstone of medical education for centuries. However, given advances in the Internet of Things, this landscape has been augmented in the past decade, shifting towards a greater focus on adopting digital technologies. Indeed, Digital Anatomy is emerging as a new discipline and represents an opportunity to embrace advances in digital health technologies and apply them to the domain of modern medical sciences. Notably, the use of augmented/mixed and virtual reality as well as mobile and platforms and 3D printing in modern anatomy has dramatically increased in the last 5 years.

Objective:

The aim of this review was to outline the emerging area of digital anatomy and summarise opportunities and challenges for incorporating digital anatomy in medical science education and practices.

Methods:

The literature was reviewed and summarised utilising PubMed, EMBASE and MEDLINE. We performed a Strength, Weakness, Opptunity and Threat (SWOT) analysis to evaluate the roles that digital anatomy plays in both the learning and teaching of medicine and health sciences as well as its practice.

Results:

Digital anatomy has not only revolutionised undergraduate anatomy education but is shifting the paradigm of pre- and vocational training for medical professionals, advancing healthcare. Importantly, it was noted that digital anatomy not only benefited in situ real time clinical practice but also has many advantages for learning and teaching of clinicians at multiple levels. Using the SWOT analysis, we described strengths and opportunities which taken together serve to underscore the benefits of embracing digital anatomy, in particular the areas for collaboration and medical advances. The SWOT analysis also identified few weaknesses associated with digital anatomy, which are primarily connected to the fact that the current reach and range of applications for digital anatomy are very limited due to its nascent nature. Further, the threats are limited to technical aspects such as hardware and software issues.

Conclusions:

This review highlighted the advances in digital health and Health 4.0 in key areas of digital anatomy analytics. The fact that the digital technologies are continuously evolving will enlarge their ability to reinforce anatomy knowledge and advance clinical practice. However, digital anatomy education should not be viewed as a simple technical conversion and needs an explicit pedagogical framework. This review will be a valuable asset for educators and researchers for incooperating digital anatomy in the learning and teaching of medical sciences and its practice.